Yesterday's hike

I didn't finish telling you about yesterday's hike. I wanted to get pictures of the sunset from the aluminum bench on the side of the mountains. There were puffy clouds around when I left the house and I thought they would look good. They were pretty much gone by the time I got on the trail, though.

It was very windy, which was pretty nice on the way up. Kept me from getting too hot. I made several stops to take pictures on the way up, so when the sun was about to set I still wasn't at the bench. I tried to hurry. I moved as fast as I could but I felt like I was crawling, and my lungs burned more than they had since running the 440 in high school. I finally realized that it probably had something to do with the double helping of red blood cells I had donated the day before. I was relieved to have a good excuse for the shortness of breath and pressed on.

I got to the bench 5 or 10 minutes before sundown. I snapped a couple of pictures, drank some water, and set up the tripod. Now the wind got a little annoying. It blew my water bottle off the bench. It blew my backpack off the bench. It blew the tripod over (but I caught it). It messed up my hair. I wanted to get more pictures of the city lights at night, but I got tired of battling the wind.

About the lights... I took those pictures with the aperature set from F11 to F22, but the lights still look blurred. I think I know why, though. The exposures were 10 to 30 seconds longs. As I stood there trying to keep the wind from shaking the tripod and watching the lights, I noticed they were twinkling quite a bit. I think that twinkling has something to do with the blurriness.

Speaking of blurred, The picture I took of myself by moonlight is very blurred. I couldn't figure out how to get the camera focused in the dark. I've figured it out now, though. I'll have to try it out some night soon.

I put some more pictures in the album, and geo-tagged a few.

2008_10_09